Based on a Henry Farell novel ,widely known for " whatever happened to baby Jane?", "how awful about Allan" is actually closer to "hush hush sweet Charlotte "in which wicked cousin Olivia De Havilland and her old beau Joseph Cotten wanted to do pitiful Bette Davis away from her valuable house .Both were Aldrich's works.
Curtiz Harrington is not Aldrich :his "games" was a "diabolique " rip-off but his "whoever slew aunt Roo" was an effective "nursery crime" thanks to Shelley Winters .
Condidering the limitations he was working under ,(twelve-day shooting), "how awful" survived the paucity of the means thanks to its first-class cast :both Perkins ("psycho" )and Harris ("the haunting " 1963) were familiar with this kind of material and neurotic characters .Add Joan Hackett and a haunting score and you get above-average MTV : although it borrows from other movies (the scene when Perkins is pushed into the room in fire will remind you of Martin Basalm's death in "psycho" )and Hitchcock did not need storm every night like here!
A subjective blurred version helps create the suspense ,and a strange student who does not speak "above a whisper " does too .And Perkins (whose last close-up is one more time influenced by "psycho" ) and Harris are so brilliant one does not know who is framing who.
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